Third World Cosmopolitans
Workers · Activists · Labor · Solidarities · Globalization · Cold War
What is it?
Third World Cosmopolitans (#twC) is a historical research initiative and digital platform that examines labor, activist, and technical networks that articulated the so-called Third World during the Cold War. The project is driven by a central concern: understanding how actors from the Global South forged agendas of social and political activism and development grounded in work, social justice, and international solidarity amid decolonization struggles, attempts at socialist transition, and enduring structural inequalities.
Rather than treating development as a technocratic or imported process, the project conceptualizes it as a social and political practice produced by workers, technicians, professionals, intellectuals, and activists who moved across national, linguistic, and cultural borders as historically situated agents of transformation.
Advancing the concept of Third World cosmopolitanism, the project highlights a form of openness to the world rooted in lived experiences of racialization and class. Through a digital platform that integrates historical research with mapping and visualization tools, as well as open access to sources, Third World Cosmopolitans contributes to debates on the global history of development, the Cold War, and labor networks.
Upcoming Deadline!
CULTURES OF EXPERTISE IN THE 20TH CENTURY: Perspectives in Global History
This call invites contributions to a thematic dossier planned for publication in 2027. The dossier focuses on the transnational circulation of experts, technical knowledge, and skilled labor throughout the twentieth century, examining how these movements shaped political projects, institutional frameworks, and global connections.
Rather than treating expertise solely as professional mobility, the dossier encourages authors to explore experts and technical workers as historical actors embedded in broader processes such as state-building, decolonization, Cold War internationalism, and Third Worldism. It welcomes case studies that analyze how expertise operated within—and across—colonial, postcolonial, socialist, and capitalist contexts, paying attention to power relations, inequalities, and competing global visions.
Deadline for Abstracts: 20 February 2026.
Join the Thread
We invite scholars, activists, independent researchers, and graduate students to collaborate with Third World Cosmopolitans. We welcome short, focused contributions on people, collectives, organizations, publications, and initiatives that circulated in, through, and from the so-called Third World, especially those committed to radical social change and alternative international imaginaries.
Contributions may take the form of micro-histories, trajectories, key events, places of memory, or archival materials. Our aim is to build a collaborative space that brings academic research, activist knowledge, and public history into dialogue. To contribute or propose an entry, contact us at twcosmopolitans@gmail.com